Through experimentation, Mendel discovered that one inheritable trait would invariably be dominant to its recessive alternative. Mendel laid out the genetic model later known as Mendelian inheritance or Mendelian genetics. This model provided an alternative to blending inheritance, which was the prevailing theory at the time. But Mendel's work received little attention from the scientific community and was largely forgotten. It was not until the early 20th century that Mendel's work was rediscovered and his ideas used to help form the modern synthesis.

In 1947, the statistician R.A. Fisher used a chi-squared test to analyze Mendel's data and concluded that Mendel's results with the predicted ratios were far too perfect, suggesting that adjustments (intentional or unconscious) had been made to the data to make the observations fit the hypothesis.[2] Later authors have claimed Fisher's analysis was flawed, proposing various statistical and botanical explanations for Mendel's numbers.[3] It is also possible that Mendel's results are "too good" merely because he reported the best subset of his data — Mendel mentioned in his paper that the data was from a subset of his experiments.